A playoff is typically a one off game to decide a winner or the entitlement to some other benefit, progressing to the next round, entry into a competition or a higher league.
The notion of a playoff causes a lot of debate. When a team may have been the better team all season in league play is suddenly forced to play a one off game that will decide a title.
Despite what many people think playoffs are not new.
In Australian Rules Football playoffs have been used as far back as 1871 to decided the league champions when both teams had the same win-loss record. In this context, this seems reasonable rather than decide it on the number or points or goals scored in a season.
The Victorian League was the first to use playoffs to decide the league winners from 1897 onwards and other leagues followed suit. Although Geelong won the league, known as the minor premiership, Essendon who finished 2nd in the league won all three games in a round robin league format involving the top four teams to become the Premiership champions.
1884 saw the first playoff between winners of the National League and American League in Baseball this became known in time as the World Series.
In 1884, New York Metropolitans of the American Association issued a challenge to their National League counterparts, the Providence Grays. The challenge was for a best-of-three series. Each team would put up a thousand dollars with the winner taking all.
Local newspaper The New York Clipper called the series “The Championship of the United States.” Several newspapers such as The Sporting Life penned the Grays as “World Champions”, and the new title stuck. Wikipedia
The modern World Series is officially deemed to have begun in 1903. There was bitter rivalry between the National League and the upstart American League. As part of a process to calm things down, a series of exhibition games had been arranged between teams. One of them, just happened to be between the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League and the Boston Americans (Red Sox) of the American League. When they arranged the series both teams were winning their respective leagues by a wide margin. It is this game that is recognised by the MLB as the first World Series game. Boston won the best of nine series, 5-3.
International Soccer / Football / Association Football did not introduce any form of playoff until the 1954 World Cup. Playoffs were introduced where teams were equal on points in the group stages.
Teams only played 2 of the others in their groups and playoffs were introduced where teams had the same number of points to decide who went through. In Group 2, despite West Germany beating Turkey 4-1 in their group match, they had both finished on 2 points, so a play-off game was played. West Germany won that game 7-2. It does seem odd that having won their group game against Turkey that West Germany could have gone out of the competition in a playoff against them. World Cup history would have been so different if they had.
It was exactly the same situation between Italy and Switzerland in Group 4, with the Swiss winning both matches.
In English Football, many think that playoffs are a relatively new thing. However in 1892 the bottom 3 teams in the First Division were involved in playoffs with the top 3 teams in the Second Division Winning 1st Division teams were guaranteed their place in the first division. However winning 2nd division teams has to be elected into the first division.
Playoffs were introduced into the modern game, in 1987 when the English Football League brought them in. This time the winners were guaranteed promotion.
The playoffs involved the 4 teams directly below the automatic promotion places, from the 2026-2027, the playoffs will involve 6 teams.
The English Championship play-off game is sometimes dubbed “The Richest Game in Football”. It is regularly estimated that the value of promotion at well over £100 million, with some suggesting over £200 million when future broadcasting and commercial revenues are included. A famous example was Huddersfield Town’s play-off final victory in 2017, which was widely reported as being worth around £170 million, while later finals have been valued even higher due to increases in Premier League revenues.
Love them or hate them, they can produce some thrilling matches.
3rd plays 6th and 4th plays 5th home and away. The winners play in a one off final to decide who gets promoted to the English Premier League. Therefore Leicester played Watford. In the first leg Leicester won 1-0.
In the reply Watford needed to score at least two games to have a chance of getting to the playoff final. If Leicester scored 1 then they would need 3 goals.
Coming up is my favorite playoff final.
2014, 3rd placed Derby County who scored 84 goals during the regular season, against 4th play QPR who managed only 60. Incidently Leicester City after their disappointment of the previous season went up automatically winning the league.
The first half of the game was fairly even. Derby came out for the second half guns blazing. QPR were on the back foot and it was only a matter of time before they scored.
15 minutes into the Second Half, Derby were through only for QPR’s Gary O’Neil to bring the player down. Automatic red card and QPR were down to 10 men.
Derby completely dominated the game. Attack after attack came. They were going to win this one. But somehow the QPR defense and goalkeeper Rob Green kept them out.
15 mins to go. The image on the the big screen said it all.
The Derby County Manager had run out of ideas, his team to not force their way through.
This video gives the personal accounts of both managers of the game.
This video shows the last few minutes of the match.